The Bookworm Beat 9/8/17 — the Hurricanes Are Normal edition

The “rape culture” worm is slowly turning. Betsy DeVos struck a blow for due process and against misanthropy when she announced that the Trump administration is withdrawing the vile “Dear Colleague” letter that Obama sent to colleges all over America. That’s the one that used the threat of withdrawing federal funds to bully colleges and universities into savaging men accused of “rape,” even when those accusations were utterly risible. Of course, with the third-generation feminists taking over campus administration — the feminists who aren’t about equality but are about man hatred — the letter was a green light for things that most of them had been itching to do anyway.

For people who had not pickled their brains in the Leftist Kool-Aid that passes for “thought” on college campuses, the kangaroo court stories periodically emerging were becoming untenable. Emily Yoffe, a Leftist who wrote the “Dear Prudence” advice column at Slate, got absolutely trashed when she dared to point out that women need to take responsibility for their own safety on campus. Moreover, she suggested that a lot of the “rape” stories involved alcohol.

Rather than backing down, Yoffe has come back with a three-part series being published in The Atlantic about the biased, totalitarian nature of campus “anti-rape” policies. Part 1 offers just some examples of men whose lives were destroyed when women claimed rape. What’s so surreal is that, as often as not, the women admit that they were the aggressors:

Kwadwo “kojo” bonsu, 23, was on track to graduate in the spring of 2016 with a degree in chemical engineering from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Bonsu, who was born in Maryland, is the son of Ghanaian immigrants. He chose UMass because it gave him the opportunity to pursue his two passions, science and music. He told me he hoped to get a doctorate in polymer science or chemical engineering. At UMass he was a member of the National Society of Black Engineers. He also joined a fraternity (he was the only black member), played guitar in a campus jazz band, and tutored jazz guitarists at a local high school.

In the early hours of Saturday, November 1, 2014, Bonsu, then a junior, was at the house where many of his fraternity brothers lived. There he ran into another junior, whom I’ll call R.M., a white, female marketing student. According to a written account by R.M., who declined to be interviewed for this story, the two started talking and smoking marijuana; eventually they kissed. As she wrote, “It got more intense until finally I shifted so that I was straddling him.” She told him she wasn’t interested in intercourse and he said he was fine with that.

Then, she wrote, “I started to move my hand down his chest and into his pants.” R.M. interrupted this to take a phone call from a female friend who was also at the house and trying to find her. The call ended and then, R.M. wrote, “I got on my knees and started to give him a blow job.” After a short time, “I removed my mouth but kept going with my hand and realized just how high I was.” She wrote that she felt conflicted because she wanted to stop—she said she told him she was feeling uncomfortable and thought she needed to leave—but that she also felt bad about “working him up and then backing out.” (In Bonsu’s written account, he stated that R.M. said she needed to leave because she was concerned her friend might “barge in” on them.) The encounter continued for a few more minutes, during which, she wrote, he cajoled her to stay—“playfully” grabbing her arm at one point, and drawing her in to kiss—then ended with an exchange of phone numbers. R.M. had not removed any clothing.

R.M. then went down to the kitchen to find her friend. As she explained in her statement, “[My friend] knows I was with Kojo. She probably told all the brothers in the room, and they’re gonna hate me when they find out”—she didn’t explain why. “I can never come back here.” Her friend started teasing her, asking how it had gone. R.M. was a resident adviser in her dormitory—someone tasked with counseling other students—and at that moment, she wrote, “as my RA training kicked in, I realized I’d been sexually assaulted.” She wrote that while in retrospect she should have left if she didn’t want to continue the encounter, she hadn’t wanted to be a bad sport—“that UMass Student Culture dictates that when women become sexually involved with men they owe it to them to follow through.” She added, “I want to fully own my participation in what happened, but at the same time recognize that I felt violated and that I owe it to myself and others to hold him accountable for something I felt in my bones wasn’t right.”

As she talked with her friend, R.M. wrote, she became distraught. She contacted the RAs on duty and reported that she had been sexually assaulted. The RAs called the campus police, who notified the Amherst police. R.M. gave her clothes to a police officer for evidence, although she said she was not ready to file charges. Then she went to the hospital, where she was given a battery of medications for possible STDs.

Just before Thanksgiving, according to a federal lawsuit filed against the university by Bonsu’s attorney, Brett Lampiasi, R.M. went to the dean of students and filed a complaint against Bonsu. She also reported him to the Amherst police. The police investigated and closed the case with no charges filed. On January 12, 2015, Bonsu got an email from a school administrator informing him that a “very serious” allegation had been lodged against him and that until a hearing was held, he was subject to “interim restrictions”: He could not contact R.M., he could visit no dormitories other than his own, he was limited to eating at a single dining hall, and he was forbidden from entering the student union.

What happened there was “gray rape”: A girl felt guilty about her own promiscuity and assuaged that guilt (egged on by her feminist friends) by destroying a young man’s life. I applaud both Yoffe and The Atlantic for having the courage to stand up to the man-hating feminists on this one.

Meanwhile, at USC, the powers that be are determined to destroy a young man’s life, even though he and his girlfriend both argue consistently and vociferously that they were engaging in fun, and consensual, rough-housing. Worse, USC is sticking to this position even thought it has video proving that there was no sexual assault.